Do you sometimes feel like when you are together all as a family that you are lonely?  That somehow you don’t fit in.  That everyone seems to be against you?  I have been told that I am ‘too sensitive’ sometimes.  Well I can’t help being sensitive.  It is the character that God gave me.  He made me a sensitive human being, and I am acutely aware of the others suffering.  I hate to see people suffering and my default mode is to take their pain on my shoulders when really I shouldn’t.  They will need to overcome it by themselves through the strength of God.

I just feel completely warn out this holiday.  I feel more tired than when I am at work!  I am in this constant tug of war battle with my emotions.  One minute I feel OK and then the next I don’t.  I see this big Sebastian shaped hole in my life, and I wonder what it would be like if he were here at this family gathering.  What it would be like to parent him, and how he would interact with the other family members.  Would he be treated differently to me?  Would they all engulf him in love?  Would they all want a piece of him?  And give him attention?  Or would he be like his mummy?  The odd one out?  Who knows…  but ever since Sebastian died, I feel that these large family gatherings are getting a bit much for me.  I sit around the table with everyone else, and he’s not there.  My son is not there, and that is a huge battle emotionally.  I miss him terribly.  Somehow during my normal routine I have been able to learn to let go of this intense missing pain. But during holidays I am still fighting a whirlpool of emotions.  How I wish he didn’t have to die when he did.  I remember two years ago, how excited I was for his arrival.  All the family was here, and they too were excited to welcome this little boy into the world, only for my hopes and dreams to come crashing down with Sebastian as he parted this world for a better place.

If only I could have held him in my arms for just a little while, and seen him and told him how much I loved him.  Maybe then it would be easier to let go of what was and what was not to be.  For me it is so frustrating that I wasn’t even able to see him.  If I could have seen him, maybe I would have had some closure?  It is nearly two years since I moved back home.  In-fact 29^th July marks two years since I moved home.  Why does everything happen on the 29^th of the month?  29^th Sebastian was born and went with a quiet dignity to heaven while I had to pick up all the broken puzzle pieces in my life.  I remember it so clearly.  That first week.  The deep dark sadness that engulfed my world, and seemed to stay, and be happy to sit on my shoulder.

I know, I know.  I need to cling onto God.  Only God can fill this empty void inside of me.  I just feel haunted by everything the last few days.  Everywhere I turn, my brokenness seems to be amplified.  Sebby is not here.  I am here.  Sebby is in heaven.  I am not in heaven.  I am here on earth, somehow still learning my lessons for God.  How I wish it could all be so very different.  I used to question God why did my son have to die.  Now I don’t.  Now I know there is a greater purpose for all of this.  And I am slowly moving in the right direction to achieving that goal.  But sometimes reaching that goal seems to be taking forever.  And yes, sometimes I wish God could have used someone else to reach out to the broken-hearted rather than me.  But somehow he chose me to lose Sebby so that I can help other women overcome their loss, and lead them to the cross.

I am a broken vessel in the big blue vast ocean, with the waves crashing and hurdling across the looming distance.  Menacing clouds ready to beat down, with the storms of life ready to batter me till I am weak and broken.  In my moments of weakness, is when I am strongest, because God is holding me up.  He is sustaining me, and carrying me forth.  I simply have to trust him to get me through.  In the same way I have to trust God to carry me through this holiday which seems to be battering my every emotion underneath the sun and I have to cling onto the foundations of my faith. Firm rooted faith.  I believe that ultimately God’s kingdom will be glorified.  I believe that suffering does happen but that it doesn’t necessarily come from God.  We live in a fallen world.  We live in a broken world, we live in a sinful world, and because of that people suffer.  People lose children.  People suffer.  And for me it was losing my son, that made me realize that I just need to keep on clinging to the Lord and that the Lord will sustain me through the ups and downs of life, as long as I anchor my hope in him.

And then your heart crashes again, and you’re drowning. Drowning.  And you can’t do anything about it, as the water swirls you around and pushes you under as you fight to keep your head above the water.  Your heart stops and you just feel like you are sinking, sinking into warm slushy slime as you allow yourself to sink into this negative marshland of emotions.  The pain.  The heartache, that will always remain beside you… you can give it up to the cross.  But can you ever fully recover from the death of your child?  Can you ever overcome the feeling that you were a failure?  I wonder, if there was even a remote possibility of my son surviving?  I wonder if he had lived, where would I be now with my faith?  What kind of person would I have become?  God is still sifting my character.  But I am a broken woman.  I admit it I am broken.  And my brokenness seems to be amplified with this family gathering, as I try and fill this feeling of loneliness, emptiness, this gaping hole with God’s word for he will sustain me.